no i wouldn't care less about myself... it's my baby i'm worried about.. its finding out on that day that you've harmed your baby just because you believed some old wives tales..... quitting poses no problems for me as i'm not a pothead... it's just plain guilt and worry

Answer "While it is sensible to advise women to abstain from all drugs during pregnancy, the weight of current scientific evidence suggests that marijuana does not directly harm the human fetus."

Relax. I read your other questions; no wonder you're feeling guilty and worried given some of the nasty, fact-free answers you got. My favourite was "your baby will be born addicted!" Oh, dear.

Keep in mind that there's nearly nothing you can ask about on here without getting "Oh no! That's terrible!" in response. People are horrible mothers-to-be if they have one beer a week, spend ten minutes in a hot tub, get a tan, eat sushi, etc, etc.

Making it nothing short of miraculous that anybody is healthy.

Speaking as a Canadian, I also think "Oh, but it's ILLEGAL!" is _absurd_. It is also a crummy rationale for condemning you for using it; consider what a jerk somebody would come off as if they similarly criticized a chemo patient who was toking. But, pregnant women are public property...

The evidence for light marijuana use causing problems seems ridiculously scant. I suspect the "never ever smoke a doobie! Ur baby will die!" comes from a largely theoretical risk. It would, of course, stand to reason that THC-free smoke is a bad idea, but you'd have to be smoking quite a bit to need to really worry about that.

Anyway, I'm sure you've done a lot of reading, but -- keep in mind that an awful lot of what you read might've been garbage; few people are willing to tell pregnant women "Yeah, living a normal life might be okay" just in case it isn't; the book "What to Expect When You're Expecting," for example, is big on warning against everything, rather strongly, with very little science behind it -- yet it's a 'pregnancy bible' for a lot of frightened women.

"I spent hour after hour poring over library books that contained references to medical marijuana and marijuana in pregnancy. Most of what I found was either a reference to the legal or political status of marijuana in medicine, or medical references that simply said that doctors discourage the use of any “recreational drug” during pregnancy. This was before I discovered the Internet, so my resources were limited. The little I could find that described the actual effects on a fetus of a mother’s smoking cannabis claimed that there was little to no detectable effect, but, as this area was relatively unstudied, it would be unethical to call it “safe.” I later discovered that midwives had safely used marijuana in pregnancy and birth for thousands of years. Old doctors’ tales to the contrary, this herb was far safer than any of the pharmaceuticals prescribed for me by my doctors to treat the same condition. I confidently continued my use of marijuana, knowing that, among all options available to me, it was the safest, wisest choice."

"Old doctors' tales" indeed. Pills are "safe" because they've been studied -- or so people think; qv Thalidomide.

Re. leukemia:

"At this time, there is no corroborative evidence to link marijuana with cancer." -- loads more details on that at http://www.mothering.com/articles/pregnancy_birth/birth_preparation/marijuana-side4.html

Pay attention to what shows up when people actually make an effort to study the risk, not just blather on about theoreticals (from the same page):

"Since 1978, psychologist Peter Fried and his colleagues have collected longitudinal data on prenatal marijuana exposure as part of the Ottawa Prenatal Prospective Study (OPPS). Over the years, these researchers have administered hundreds of tests to the same group of children, assessing their physical development, psychomotor ability, emotional and psychological adjustment, cognitive functioning, intellectual capacity, and behavior.

Out of all the OPPS studies and all the tests given, researchers have found very few differences between marijuana-exposed and nonexposed children."

Measurements and main results. Exposed and nonexposed neonates were compared at 3 days and 1 month old, using the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale, including supplementary items to capture possible subtle effects. There were no significant differences between exposed and nonexposed neonates on day 3. At 1 month, the exposed neonates showed better physiological stability and required less examiner facilitation to reach organized states. The neonates of heavy-marijuana-using mothers had better scores on autonomic stability, quality of alertness, irritability, and self-regulation and were judged to be more rewarding for caregivers."

The stuff certainly looks safer, and more useful, than a lot of the 'pregnancy category C' drugs still routinely used in pregnancy despite being poorly studied. It's all but impossible to find reliable information on the effects of my particular asthma inhaler on pregnancy outcomes, but nobody gives me a hard time about using it. Which is safer, daily inhalation of a relatively untested chemical that does have a little link to cleft palates in animal studies, or occasional use of a herb I'm sure pregnant women have been using for ages? Your call.